ly later. But in doing so, he displayed both literacy skills and maturity in writing reflective text about his experience. We know that learning comes through play as well as through hard work, and learners of all ages deserve some fun! The handset would be really useful on school excursions, he suggested: ‘taking all the important bits, showing them where we are’, but alas! mobile phones were not allowed at his school.

We also lent phones to indigenous secondary school students from urban and island communities in Australia. This demographic group often has low literacy scores, irregular school attendance, and a high proportion of discipline incidents in school. We left them alone with the devices and returned several weeks later to see what they had created. One student from a remote island returned after four weeks spent with his family, bringing recordings of stories told by his grandfather in the indigenous language. Others showed us videos and images, with family as the dominant theme. It’s hard to decide who gained the most through this learning activity: the students or us! They made rich contributions to their personal curriculum, and we were honoured to share them. As pioneers in ‘mobile learning’, some of the students were interviewed on radio and appeared in the press, giving their literacy skills real-world application. Their motivation for learning was sparked by their involvement in the project.

We concluded that the mobile devices and digital content can be important in producing narratives for literacy development, and that they also support social cohesion and cultural identity. But as students develop skills and knowledge through new forms of content production, teachers need to devise ways to assess both processes and products, if they are to be valued fully in school.

Teachers can use mobiles to create rich content too. One of our most enthusiastic participants was a building studies teacher who developed teaching aids such as plans and animations that he sent to students via MMS. He also collected evidence of student construction work on distributed sites through video and still images, and he recorded audio memos for future reference. He encouraged his students to use their camera phones to document progress, and to send selected items to a blog site on the web. All the evidence was then stored in an ePortfolio archive on a local server.

Mobile devices are the computers of the 21st century, and many students already own them. Adapting these available technologies to productive uses in school may be a way to keep young people interested in learning. At recent film festivals, a new category for short movies made on camera phones has been included. This is excellent modelling of the potential of mobiles, and would fit well into school work. But since assessment drives curriculum, we need to explore ways to include authentic assessment of items like movies created on mobile devices, multimedia essays and collections of digital material in ePortfolios. Let’s hope that future press about mobiles is able to show evidence of how valuable they are in schools!

References

Hartnell-Young, E., & Vetere, F. (2005). Lifeblog: A New Concept in Mobile Learning? Paper presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education WMTE 2005 Tokushima, Japan.
Roschelle, J. (2003). Unlocking the learning value of mobile phones. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19(3), 260-272.


Elizabeth Hartnell-Young is a Research Fellow in the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a member of the organising committee for MLearn 2007, to be held in Melbourne, Australia.

She is keen to hear from teachers interested in using mobile technologies in schools.


elizabeth.hartnell-young@nottingham.ac.uk
Further information is at www.nottingham.ac.uk/lsri/ehy
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Ask Brian!  Copy Right Issues

Hi, until recently I was the A level ICT co-ordinator and ILT (Information and Learning Technology) mentor at a local North West college, and now the HoD at another. I was wondering whether I was going to be able to continue my role as ILT mentor elsewhere, and I think Tim has allowed me to fulfil this.

In this column I will be throwing open the issues of ILT…trying to answer the questions and giving advise to all you out there who actually care enough about it to change the ones who really don’t want to change.

One of the things that normally throws my colleagues is the fact that I do not have an IT background…its medical. I was a science teacher for many years and then some one asked do I know about databases…and the rest is history….

Always having a passion for all things IT, this pushed me into the role of mentor and found having mini victories in converting people and in some cases whole departments kept my sanity and enthused me to carry on.

So what I want from you is…what do you want help with and what do you want to know?

This week we will start off with the issue of copyright….a little nugget next to my heart.

Recently I had a little run in with an exam board when I asked for permission to reproduce some materials electronically within a database of questions used by the students for revision. Being rather proud of my invention (and actually being an examiner for the board) I thought that I would give it away to all institutions that used the same syllabus. I talked to JISC about distributing it and they said they would support me, but they advised me to talk to the boards copyright department to make sure that its ok. I wrote to them expecting that there would be no problems regarding this….was I wrong. The letter that got returned to me was shall we say, straight to the point, and meant that I couldn’t redistribute the software and also made me reconsider the amount of effort I put into making a resource in the future.

There are far reaching complications after my enquiry too. They letter that I received stipulated what can be held electronically and what cannot and in what format.

For example…

If you are storing on your network past exam papers that is ok, but not past and not specifications.

If you are using exam type questions from the exam board and you decompile them, for example isolate specific questions from different exam questions and put them together in one document that may be against copyright:

  1. The original question that the exam board used may be from a third part and therefore you do not have permission for that
  2. You may (dependant on copyright), not be able to store the questions in any other form than what was distributed.
  3. You are supposed to get written consent BEFORE you start.

There is also now an issue of reproduction of audio and video materials. With more and more language labs being, not to put too fine a point on it, broken down into other classrooms, and those old cassettes being converted into a digital format may be against copyright. Especially since students may download the sound files on MP3 players or USB pens. Also how many of you out there give students material to use as revision, or homework based on the exam boards questions, or materials perhaps on CDROM? We all do it, but unknowingly could be in breach of copyright. As an ICT teacher, and one who has to preach the 1988 Designs, Copyright and Patents Act, doesn’t mean I have to think it is right, but what I want is a chance for the exam boards to be more flexible in the approach to the use of their materials.

Fortunately, the two resources that I have invested heavily in time, my interactive CDROM of revision materials, and the Question Database do not breach copyright, as it is used only by students within the college, but to what price an invaluable resource??? After all a lot of the materials are useless after a while anyway as the specification changes…

So do you have any hints and tips to get round the issue of breaking the law of copyright? What do you know about the issues of holding material on a server? Have you ever felt the wrath of the exam boards legal department? Or do you think that its best to keep quiet and plead ignorance?

Let me know what you think.

Brian - askbrian@icteachers.co.uk


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Hi Tech Bullying

It’s time for schools to have a radical overhaul of their bullying policies to make them relevant to the new Millennium.

 

Most are still firmly rooted in the last century but traditional playground pursuits of name calling, pushing and shoving and exclusion from friendships are being overtaken by the newer phenomena of mobile phone text abuse, happy slapping and abusive websites.

 

Unfortunately bullies will use whatever weapon they can find against their victims and they’re happily exploiting new technology for their own ends.

 

Many schools tell parents who complain that these are activities off the premises and they don’t want to get involved. That isn’t the case. Bullying Online has shut down a number of abusive website forums which are most active at lunchtime so pupils are clearly taking advantage of the school’s generosity in providing the facility to upload more insults.

 

Text message bullying is now old hat. The distress caused when a child opens up a message thinking its from a friend only to find it’s a death threat or anonymous filth is no longer a surprise to anyone. What is a surprise is that they are still getting away with it.

 

They’re also getting away with happy slapping.

 

This craze,  which started on London Transport and quickly spread to school playgrounds up and down the country like a malevolent virus, involves an innocent person being hit over the head while other members of the gang use mobile phones to photograph the attack. Sometimes there’s a robbery but mostly it’s just for kicks and the pictures are either passed around the gang or uploaded onto the internet.

 

Last year, wearing my other hat as a journalist, I was involved in a story about a happy slapping shooting in which a girl from Leeds was shot in the leg and then the gunman’s accomplice took a picture of her bleeding. This depraved act was carried out in daylight in a suburb of Leeds and resulted in the teenager needing an operation.

 

Since Bullying Online appeared on Tonight with Trevor McDonald we’ve had a large number of complaints about happy slapping with most people saying they were too embarrassed to contact the police or even tell their parents.

 

To call these attacks happy slapping is a bit like calling someone who steals a car and kills someone a joy rider. There’s nothing happy about it, the attackers are committing a series of criminal offences.

 

The first is assault. The second is harassment if these pictures are uploaded to the internet or passed around, and the third is a telecommunications offence for using the phone system to cause alarm or distress.

 

Uploading abuse to a website forum or sending abusive text messages is also harassment.

 

Some schools have already banned mobile phones from being used during the day to prevent pupils sending abusive text messages. We're now hearing of others banning them after happy slapping incidents. It's unfortunate that the bad behaviour of a tiny minority of pupils inconveniences everyone but if head teachers think there is a risk of assaults on the premises then they need to protect pupils and a ban on phones on the premises is probably the best way to do that.

 

IT teachers can also do their bit by finding out what people are doing on school computers. This is certainly not an invasion of privacy. Parents who have access to the internet and email at work will almost certainly be told that anything they do on their computer will be monitored and could be read by the office IT department. Schools need to be just as vigilant.

 

They also need to decide what to do when they find a violation in which a victim’s mother is described as a prostitute and her phone number is given out on the internet. Do they call in the police? Contact the culprit’s parents? Ignore it? Does the bullying policy cater for these hi-tech incidents?

 

Parents often turn to Bullying Online for help. We’ve built up some good relationships with firms in the US and Canada who host the free webspace where these abusive forums are based. We can often get these sites shut down but the problem is that the pupil immediately starts them up again.

 

We’ve had many complaints about Bebo, Myspace and Piczo and the firms behind these websites need to make it much easier for parents to get abusive content removed. If they don’t then sooner or later one of them will be sued because young people are not confining their remarks to classmates, they’re quite free with their libelous remarks about the victim’s parents too.

 

We’d like to see some high profile prosecutions involving text phone abuse and  harassment on websites. Happy slapping took an immediate dive in popularity and the number of complaints to us plunged after perpetrators were jailed for their filmed assaults on others.

 

There is now software which schools can use to monitor outgoing emails and uploads to the internet. It might hit you in the pocket but sooner or later there will be a parent who sues a school for permitting abuse about their child to be broadcast through cyberspace.

 

If you don’t want to spend the money on monitoring what little Johnny is doing on your computers at lunchtime you’d better make sure your school insurance policy is up to date!

 

 

Liz Carnell FRSA

Director

Bullying Online

www.bullying.co.uk

 

Copyright Bullying Online 1999-2006

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News from the Vaultman!

Did you see that we got a mention in the latest NAACE Primary Focus magazine (under Early Years in the Web Resources section)?

I've been a bit snowed under lately but have recently added some new resources and links, including a super presentation dealing with the Judaeo-Christian creation story for Foundation / KS1 (on the RE Resources page) and some simple Sudoku grids suitable for KS1 and lower KS2 (on our new Miscellaneous Resources page).

I have also begun the long-overdue task of weeding out broken and dead links from our links pages. I think that is going to be a looong job! If you find any links that no longer work, it would be really helpful to let me know.

Keep watching the PhotoLibrary, too. I've got lots of great photos to add, as soon as I have time.


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World Cup Resources links!

Three very useful links to resources around the world cup!
World Cup and Other Cyberhunts

NAACE primary world cup materials - excellent!

The Aylesbury Vale Secondary Support Centre - just click on the Queen.

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Free whiteboard science simulations

Free whiteboard science simulations

Until the end of June 2006, Crocodile Clips is offering a set of free GCSE science simulations  from its website.

 

The ‘Crocodile Science player’ is a cut-down version of the simulation software programs Crocodile Physics and Crocodile Chemistry. It lets you open, run and interact with a set of 8 science simulations taken from Crocodile Physics and Crocodile Chemistry. You can use these either on a whiteboard, or on individual computers.

And the best thing: you can download it completely free of charge from the website. It's only available during June, but once you've got it it's yours to keep.

Please feel free to pass the link on to colleagues that may benefit from this offer.

 

Visit www.crocodile-clips.com/science to download your free Crocodile Science player.

 

Stephanie Johnson
MARKETING DEPARTMENT

Crocodile Clips
 www.crocodile-clips.com
 t: (0131) 226 1511
f: (0131) 226 1522

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Copyright ICTeachers 2006